Unanswered Questions

Slate's Explainer presents a list of questions that were submitted but not answered. They propose to answer one of these, chosen on the basis of a reader vote. (Details at the bottom of the article.)

Some of my favorites:

Lasers are now powerful and small (at least I think they are), so why don't our troops carry laser guns?

Because Home Depot doesn't carry an extension cord long enough to reach Iraq.

Is it possible to collect all the cookie dough in Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream and actually bake cookies from it?

"Coming up next on Mythbusters..."

Just suppose, one day someone wants to sell you an old gold bar. You don't know if it belongs to any treasure, and you can't find out if there is any reward for it, if it was a lost treasure. How would you go about melting it and selling it? The same would go for a gemstone about the size of a dinner plate. How would you go about selling it? If you're living in a country that is corrupt and you cannot trust the government, or anyone else, what can you do?

"You see, I have this... friend... whose father was the former ruler of Freedonia, and..."

PYGMIES: How/when/where/still in existence/do we mate with them?

Really, it's the formatting that makes this question.

I have noticed that a lot of mainstream movies feature men peeing. Are the actors really peeing?

You know, it never occurred to me to wonder about that...

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PYGMIES: How/when/where/still in existence/do we mate with them?

I'm guessing that this is written so tersely because it was originally written for the newspaper classified "Personals" section. (Given the last question there.)

I have noticed that a lot of mainstream movies feature men peeing. Are the actors really peeing?

In general, no, but in the first Austin Powers movie, that was all real.

Also, in Superman, when men are depicted flying, the actor there really was, in fact, flying.

I know I've seen someone actually scrape out all the cookie dough bits and bake them, but I cannot for the life of me find the site....

Why is smooth peanut butter cheaper than nutty?

Aside from Laura Scudder's and very few others, there are no peanuts in peanut butter except for chunky style (hence the higher cost). The solids are peanut manufacturing waste from expressing and extracting peanut oil. Peanut oil is expensive. The peanut waste is re-expanded using soy or canola oil. Look at the ingredients box. Makes ya wanna barf.

But what happens to soy waste from expressing and extracting soy oil? That's Hamburger Helper and textured soy protein. Look at the ingredients. Canola oil started as rapeseed oil, then bred to reduce the content of cardiotoxic erucic acid.

"there are no peanuts in peanut butter except for chunky style (hence the higher cost)."

Yes. I've been working on permitting an ethanol plant in Moses Lake Washington (it supposedly sells tomorrow). It was originally built to process scrap potato waste from the french fry industry, and then mothballed. Funny that it's raw material source dried up soon after tater tots were invented. And there's probably some dog food or biodiesel operation out there that got closed down by the invention of chicken nuggets.

Yeah, and "dry roasted" peanuts aren't actually roasted at all. But they are boiled in sorbitol.

"there are no peanuts in peanut butter except for chunky style (hence the higher cost)."

Huh? If the solid part of a peanut when the oil is pressed out isn't a peanut what is it?